Geologist Donald Prothero doesn’t like the fact that we don’t agree
with his ideas on evolution.

Published: 26 March 2008(GMT+10)

I love the attitude some evolutionists have toward professional, scientific debate.
Because creationist scientists do not agree with their biased, subjective and unsubstantiated
ideas they spit the dummy and call us liars.

The latest tirade from geologist Donald Prothero is in an opinion piece in NewScientist
entitled ‘Evolution: What missing link?’1 I like that title.

His article was picked up by the Telegraph newspaper in the UK which reported,
‘Creationists “peddle lies about the fossil record”.’2

Lies? Are creationists really lying?

No!

It’s just that Prothero does not like the fact that we don’t agree with
his ideas. It upsets him so much that he describes creationists in this way: ‘Foremost
among their tactics is to distort or ignore the evidence for evolution; a favourite
lie is “there are no transitional fossils”.’3

A favourite lie. That means he thinks creationists use lots of lies. Wow, that is
some accusation. Especially when that would involve hundreds of thousands of Christians
denying the moral standards of the very Bible we claim to be defending.

But the fact is that creationists are not convinced by the arguments that
evolutionists put forward. We can’t help it if they are not convincing. I’m
sorry that he doesn’t like it. It would be nice if he was prepared to listen
to what creationists are actually saying (instead of what he thinks they are saying)
and to understand their concerns about evolutionary interpretations of the evidence.
I think it would even help his research. But he must be quite upset and emotional
to be calling us liars.

Prothero began his NewScientist article like this:

‘When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859,
there was relatively little evidence in the fossil record of evolutionary change.
Darwin spent two chapters of his book apologising for the paucity of the fossil
record, but predicted that it would eventually support his ideas.’

Yep. There is no argument here. Creationists would agree with Prothero, except I
wouldn’t call it ‘relatively little evidence’. I would call it
more of an ‘absence of evidence’. Darwin described it as ‘the
most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory.’4

Diagram by Kevin Padian and GeoTimes

Figure 2. Cladogram of fish to land animal transition gives the
illusion that ancestor-descendant relationships have been identified. Click picture to see larger version.

What Prothero shows here is that Darwin’s theory was accepted in spite
of the evidence from the geological record. In effect Darwin said, ‘Trust
me! I’ve got a great theory, but unfortunately I don’t have the fossil
evidence. But don’t worry. We’ll find it.’ Prothero goes on:

‘What Darwin was bemoaning was the lack of "transitional" fossils—those
with anatomical features intermediate between two major groups of organisms. At
the time, such fossils were conceived as "missing links" in the "great chain of
being" from lowly corals through higher organisms such as birds and mammals to humans
(and ultimately to God).’5

Darwin was definitely bemoaning the lack of transitional fossils, and he was right
to expect them. Based on his theory he anticipated finely graduated organic chains,
but you don’t find them. To the intense annoyance of evolutionists, creationists
have been drawing attention to this persistent scarcity of fossil evidence for decades
(See for example, Evolution: The Fossils
Still Say No!). Prothero continues:

‘We now know this is a misconception.’

Be alert. When an evolutionist says, ‘We now know … ’ you can
be sure that he now realizes that the evidence does not fit his theory. This statement
means that he is about to change his story so he can hold onto his theory in spite
of the contradictory evidence. Prothero again:

‘Life does not progress up a hierarchical ladder from "low" to "high" but
is a branching bush with numerous lineages splitting apart and coexisting simultaneously.’

Sounds like a bit of spin here. In fact Darwin had a concept of a bush from the
beginning, and the only diagram that appeared in his first edition showed exactly
what Prothero describes, ‘numerous lineages splitting apart and coexisting
simultaneously’.6
Darwin’s first sketch (see figure 1) of an evolutionary tree from his First
Notebook on Transmutation of Species (1837) also resembles a branching bush. Prothero
again:

‘For example, apes and humans split from a common ancestor 7 million years
ago and both lineages are still around.’

So, both lineages are still alive on the earth but the common ancestor is not. In
other words there is no evidence for that common ancestor, fossil or living. So
how does Prothero know there was a common ancestor? Because, in his mind, evolution
is a fact.

‘For this reason the concept of “missing link” is a misleading
one. A transitional form does not need to be a perfect halfway house directly linking
one group of organisms to another. It merely needs to record aspects of evolutionary
change that occurred as one lineage split from another.’

The interesting thing here is how evolutionists have discovered a technique for
preserving their theory without needing evidence of intermediate forms.

The interesting thing here is how evolutionists have discovered a technique for
preserving their theory without needing evidence of intermediate forms. How do they
do that? One way is by means of cladograms.

Kevin Padian, Curator in the Museum of Paleontology at the University of California
at Berkeley illustrates the technique in an article in Geotimes entitled
‘Improving Evolution Education’.7 In that article he has a diagram illustrating the
‘origin of the tetrapods’ (see figure 2) which illustrates transitional
forms between fish and land animals. Notice how the diagram resembles a bush, and
is not distinctly different from Darwin’s early sketch. Padian says:

‘Between 385 and 360 million years ago, a lineage of fleshy-finned vertebrates
evolved four legs and, eventually, the ability to walk on land. The steps of this
transition are recorded in the fossils, some of which are shown here. Many other
lines of evidence, including stratigraphy, comparative anatomy, and genetic comparisons
among modern organisms, support this hypothesis.’

I’m glad he used the word ‘hypothesis’. But the cladogram he presents
does not establish phylogenetic (ancestor-descendant) relationships. All it does
is arrange things according to similarities.

Notice that the cladogram shows nine different animals arranged in order. Observe
that these animals are linked together with solid black lines, conveying the impression
that groups of animals evolved from a common ancestor. It’s like a bush. There
are eight common ancestors indicated by the intersection of lines on the diagram.

So, does this diagram demonstrate that evolution is a fact as Padian claims? Let’s
look at the evidence. Is there evidence for the animals shown on the tips
of the cladogram? Yes, lots of it. We have many examples of ray-finned fish, lungfish
and living tetrapods. And we have fossil evidence of the other animals shown, such
as tiktaalik. So the evidence exists and it is at the
tips of the cladogram, or the tips of the bush.

Do we have evidence of the common ancestors that are indicated by the intersection
of the lines on the cladogram? For example, do we have evidence of the common ancestor
that gave rise to the living tetrapods and fossil tulerpeton, as required by the
intersection of their lines? No, we don’t. What about where the other lines
intersect, do we have examples of those common ancestors? No, we have none at all.

So all Padian has done in his cladogram is arrange an assortment of animals, fossil
and living, into a sequence according to various characteristics. In his mind the
diagram proves evolution is a fact. But he believed that before he drew the diagram.
To a creationist the diagram does not say anything about whether any of the animals
have a common ancestor.

And that is what Prothero is so upset about, that creationists won’t accept
the arguments evolutionists put forward to support their evolutionary ideas.

But think about it. We could apply the cladogram methodology to dinner cutlery.
We could arrange knives, forks, spoons, splades, etc in a cladogram and it could
look very impressive. But that would not prove that spoons and forks had a common
ancestor. We could apply it to transport vehicles such as bicycles, motorcycles,
cars, trucks and semi-trailers. The cladogram would work wonderfully on these objects
too but that would not mean that bicycles and motorbikes are each descended from
a common ancestor.

As creationist Walter ReMine said in his book The Biotic Message, cladograms
give an illusion of a phylogeny (a family tree) when in fact there is none:

‘Illusion is created with tree-structured imagery, such as cladograms and
phenograms. These are said to be evidence for evolution, but they do not identify
a single ancestor-descendant relationship.’8

Prothero seems to get so angry because he thinks creationists are ‘distorting
and ignoring the evidence’. I’d like to explain to him gently that we
are not doing any such thing. It’s just that we are not convinced by the spin
in diagrams like cladograms. I’m sorry if it upsets him, but we don’t
agree with his ideas. It would be nice if evolutionists would be open to discuss
the ideas and arguments instead of being abusive and calling us
names.

But then the question of whether we are created by an intelligent being or whether
we are simply the product of impersonal material processes is an emotional one.
It has huge personal implications—for this life and the next.

Distorting and ignoring the evidence for evolution?

Examples of transitional forms?

I like this one (left) on the NewScientist site that pointed the reader
to Prothero’s article.9

NewScientist caption: What missing link? Reports of huge gaps in the fossil
record have been greatly exaggerated, says geologist Donald Prothero

I especially like the way the artist has the animal halfway between the water and
the land. It conveys the concept of a transitional form extremely well, don’t
you think?

This one (right) on the front cover of NewScientist is very amusing.10 The text
on the cover says ‘Amazing missing links’. I agree that the artist’s
image is amazing, a comical representation of a transitional form. I’m interested
to know what else they’ve found.

Perhaps the artist that illustrated the Telegraph item for human evolution
(below) provided the most convincing evidence of all. What do you think?

Telegraph.Co.UK

Telegraph caption: Apes and humans split from a common ancestor seven million years
ago and both lineages are still around.

I wonder if this watercolour painting was intended to be serious or comical.

We recommend against arguing there are no transitional forms
(see Arguments we think creationists should not use).
Since there are candidates, even though they are highly dubious, it’s
better to avoid possible comebacks by saying instead: ‘While Darwin predicted
that the fossil record would show numerous transitional fossils, even 140 years
later, all we have are a handful of disputable examples.’ Return
to text.

The reader could be misled by Prothero here; the ‘Great
Chain of Being’ leading up to God was a pre-evolutionary concept adapted from
Greek thought. It may have laid the ground for Darwinism, but it is clear that even
without it, the notion of gradual step-by-step changes from one type to a totally
different type (e.g. reptile to bird) demands the existence of a chain of creatures
which had varying combinations of the anatomical features of both groups. E.g. if
a reptile turned into a bird over vast periods of time, the limb did not turn into
a wing instantly, but changed progressively over the generations. Thus large numbers
of creatures with ‘intermediate’ features should have lived and died,
with as much chance of being preserved as fossils as the ‘end forms’.
Return to text.

Padian, K., Improving evolution education, GeoTimes
53(2):59, Feb 2008. One way of improving evolution education would be to
teach it factually, unlike the latest attempt by the NAS in their publication Science, Evolution and Creationism. Return
to text.

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Comments closed

Readers’ comments

Justin A.,Australia, 18 November 2009

“So all Padian has done in his cladogram is arrange an assortment of animals, fossil and living, into a sequence according to various characteristics.’ I think this article could benefit slightly by stating the obvious a little more, and saying something perhaps like, “This is an argument not from fossil evidence but a statement of belief system based on the argument of similarity or homology.”

Also the slight difference between cladograms (wrong as they are) and cutlery and transport vehicles is that neither of the latter reproduce, nor undergo natural processes of observable change in reproducing populations through adaptation, mutation and natural selection.

You have given me a new way to look at cladograms. The missing links are so obvious to point out, since they are the points where the lines split up. None of the fossils in the cladogram are at a "link", a point where to lines diverge.

Carlton R.,United States, 19 November 2009

Great article!

Pointing out the illusions in and all the bluff and bluster with the cladograms nonsense was very illuminating. The analogy with the knife, fork and spoon certainly made the point very clearly.

The ‘evo-disciples’ prove Romans 1 true every time they open their mouths. They even claim that they can determine the age of the earth and universe! I just want to know how they calibrate their methods used to produce these ‘ages’ and how they can possibly ‘know’ when they have got it absolutely right. If not absolutely right, then how close is it? They prove themselves fools by thinking they can even answer the ‘age’ question.

Greg D.,United States, 19 November 2009

How interesting that the cladogram is Kevin Padian’s. Kevin Padian has a long, documented history of understanding exactly how powerful images are to people’s understanding and belief in a subject. In Padian’s own words, the images don’t have to correspond to reality, they merely have to be plausible (in context, he’s not advocating lying, just saying that people will believe the image if it’s merely plausible).

There is a good reference to this. I will try to dig it up and send it to you.

Ruben J.,Netherlands, 20 November 2009

Very few individuals actually lived in the direct vicinity of the branch points, so finding a common ancestor that lived around the time of those branch points would be extremely unlikely. Finding creatures that are related to those common ancestors and that show some of the steps in our evolution, is the best we can hope for.

Unless we are extremely lucky, of course. And even if we were to find a common ancestor (an organism that should be placed at a branch point), if we would place such an organism in a cladogram, it would still be at the tip of its own branch. That’s inherent to the process of making cladograms.

George T.,Republic of Korea, 20 November 2009

Say! Why don’t we do exactly that! i.e. grab a bunch of knives, forks, spoons, sporks, etc and arrange them up in some suitable transitional order and take a picture of it.

I’d love to see one of the progression of cars, trucks, Bicycles etc.

Any takers for the project?

Ross S.,United Kingdom, 4 December 2009

In response to Ruben: It’s very convenient that some evolutionists now say

that mutations occur over a very small number of generations, over a short period—this

allows them to get around the fact of the missing transitionals, claiming they are

very rare. But this is not what Darwin believed. So much of his original treatise

has been rewritten as the lack of evidence has forced constant imaginative reworking

of the theory. But explaining away a lack of evidence is not science. Basing a theory

on evidence and then showing it is true by repeatable experiment is science. That

is basic school boy teaching!

In addition to the received comments posted above, Tas Walker has responded to another comment in Creationists are hypocritical, which is posted as one of our weekly feedback articles.